Una frowned slightly when he jumped away and caught the stink of fear in her mind as he spoke to her. She found it difficult to believe something so large was afraid of her and as she gazed at the lights reflecting into the large golden eye that gazed at her. As a child raised in relative comfort and safety she couldn't fathom that it was his upbringing that made him recoil so quickly but imagined that the battles and danger he must face everyday must make him wary she reasoned. She assumed the creature was a he as it was a distinctly masculine voice that resounded in her head.
Squealing when he broke her concentration with his shriek Una wiggled in his feathered cave, his bristles tickling her stomach and arms. Unas eyes widened, his gaze felt as physical as water trickling over her body and made her gulp self-consciously and continue speaking regardless.
The tiny squawks and feeling of his large and sharp beak gently caressing the baubles had the same effect as a cold blade running lightly over her skin and made her jump and tense. The feeling was pleasant in a way she had never experienced like a warm stone in the base of her stomach. Flinching away from his touch, both delighted and thrilled by his exuberance Una put her hands the smooth end of his beak gently and pushed him away, body glowing pink with embarrassment and continued talking more rapidly and loudly than before.
Una gulped as he hopped sideways covering the distance she had created.
“What’s coral?” His voice interrupted her swaying movement. "Oh." She paused tapping her upper lip in the same manner her mother did when she thought, "They are like...like living stone. They make houses the same way your mountain makes houses. But the water helps hold them up. Because they are fragile." She couldn't hear the frustrating in his voice but understood how frustrating it was not to understand something someone took else took for granted.
Una didn't understand much of the words he said, not knowing what ashes or the Valterrain was. "What are ashes? and the Valterrain?" She stumbled over the later word struggling to copy the same chirped pronunciation. Unas eyes widened as he continued the story and gazed at the sky with adoration. She loved the sea and the land, but like many she loved that which she couldn't have more. The sky was dizzying in its vastness, more vast than land or sea the Inartans had possession of the world because they possessed the sky. Una was green with jealousy as he spoke.
Reaching out, Una ponderously stroked the feathers. Both rigid and soft she pressed her cheek into his feathers. Less intimidated now that his beak no longer roamed so close to her head and chest she pressed her hands into his neck feeling them disappear in several levels of feathers. "We're gifts from the gods too. We're just as special." Una replied arrogantly sticking her pink tongue at the bird goofily eyes squeezed shut with the effort.
Opening them sharply when his sharp beak enclosed her shoulder Una felt panic bathe her breast, pressing against it as it did when she descended too far in the ocean. Though her little form was weak compared to his she shoved hard at his beak, feet struggling through the heavy shifting sand toward the ocean. Toward escape. Things that bit were predators, even if he COULD talk and ask questions.
The cold frothing water tickled her toes and she released a sigh of relief as she leapt for the deeper water, body curving as dolphins do eyes not daring to look over her shoulder and hoping she fell faster than he could lunge.
OOCI'll letcha do your last post and then put this up to be graded.
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